The room key is physical — a metal key for a manual lock, the kind used in 1927 when Annalisa Netherly checked into Room 311 at the Read House Hotel in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and did not check out. The Read House, opened in its current form in 1926, was one of the South’s premier luxury addresses. Room 311 was unremarkable — a standard third-floor room — until the year a jealous lover allegedly killed Netherly in its clawfoot bathtub. The hotel’s most recent renovation restored the room to its exact 1920s state: the original tub, an AM radio, the manual lock. Every detail is there. So, guests say, is she.
The reports from Room 311 span decades and carry a specific consistency that separates them from ordinary old-hotel unease. Guests describe voices without a source, lights flickering, water running in the bathroom when no one is there, cold spots, shadowy figures. Some say they have seen Annalisa Netherly herself — always near the bathroom, always near the tub. The hotel does not minimize any of this. Room 311 has its own website page, its own October package — the Room 311 Experience — complete with bathtub gin, cocktails, dining credits, and ghost tour tickets. The note about breakfast applies only should you make it until morning.
Tours of the room are available upon request, subject to guide availability. The experience is managed, not casual. You book a night in a room where something happened in 1927, in a bathtub that was there when it happened, with a key that turns in the original lock — and you wait to see what the room does with you.
Story Source: www.thereadhousehotel.com
Address: The Read House Hotel, 827 Broad Street, Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA
Accessibility Rating: Guided Tours Only — Access permitted only as part of an organized tour. Independent exploration not allowed.
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What Others Have Experienced
The room runs noticeably colder than the rest of the hotel floor. The manual key lock — a physical key, not a keycard — is the same type used in 1927, and the guide explained it was there to keep Annalisa safely inside. Every detail reinforces the era: a clawfoot tub, an AM radio that doesn’t work, a pull-chain toilet, distressed hardwood floors. When I lingered alone in the bathroom after the group left, a shadowy figure appeared in the mirror in a black dress that belonged to none of the women on the tour.
— from jenron-designs.com
The versions of Annalisa’s story don’t agree — the hotel’s telling has her beheaded by a jealous husband in 1927, but other accounts say she died of heartbreak, or was killed differently, and none of it is independently documented. The guide was straightforward about this, which made the story more interesting rather than less. What guests consistently report across all versions: unexplained noises, lights that flicker on their own, running water with no one at the tap, and shadowy figures.
— from thequeenoftrips.com
An Atlanta couple who stayed in Room 311 described a sleepless night — voices without a clear source, scratching sounds, something that felt like a hand grabbing a wrist, and pressure against the bed from below. By morning the room’s drawers had been found standing open. They arrived skeptics and checked out as believers. Their account is consistent with what other overnight guests in the room have described.
— from local3news.com
The room’s notoriety extends beyond Annalisa — Al Capone stayed in Room 311 while passing through Chattanooga, and the iron bars on the windows are the same configuration he originally had installed to deter escape attempts. The combination of a murdered woman’s ghost and a 1930s mobster’s confinement gives the room a layered history that works on visitors regardless of whether they believe in hauntings.
— from ghostcitytours.com
Room 311 is only bookable overnight on weekends in October, released in September through the hotel newsletter and gone within the hour — $666 to $999 depending on the year, one night maximum. The rest of the year, the room operates as a tour stop, free and available on request to hotel guests. The 1920s restoration is precise: the vintage clawfoot tub, the AM radio, the manual key lock, and a room temperature guests consistently describe as colder than the rest of the floor.
— from thereadhousehotel.com
